Word: teodori
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...work is the fruit of a genuine romance between the opera's composer, longtime Costello keyboardist Steve Nieve, and the writer and psychoanalyst Muriel Teodori, who wrote the Franco-English libretto. First released as a Deutsche Grammophon recording in 2007, the opera recounts the story of Greek immigrant steelworker Dionysos (played by a bearded Sting), who falls in love with an opera diva, much to the consternation of his blue-collar buddies. His stalker-like obsession nearly gets him incarcerated by the police commissioner (a hulking, black-robed Costello), but with a little supernatural intervention by the ghosts of operas...
...Teodori rejects the characterization. "When you're not cynical people say you're naive, and our message is simple and without cynicism," she says. "It's the belief in the virtue of hybrids, of mixing what at first wouldn't seem to go together." Teodori weaves her tale by drawing on age-old themes - the clashes between high and low culture, and the upper and working classes...
...Lily. But when the ghosts of Carmen, Butterfly and Norma visit Dionysos in his sleep singing "Opera always kills its lovers," Dionysos brushes off their calls for a proper opero-tragic suicide. "He doesn't want anything to do with that Valhalla tradition celebrating tragedy, pain and death," says Teodori. "And neither do I." It's one of the opera's more effective conceits, and Nieve's arias shine with what one applauding critic called "a true musicologist's reflection on the themes of Bizet, Bellini and Puccini...
...Japanese on record, who died at the age of 120 in 1986, was also from Tokunoshima. With Hongo's death, the distinction goes to Mitoyo Kawate, a 114-year-old woman in Hiroshima. Hongo had seven children, 27 grandchildren, 57 great-grandchildren and 11 great-great-grandchildren. She practiced teodori, a type of slow dance, and drank green tea and an occasional cup of shochu liquor. Following a hip operation at the age of 110, she became known for sleeping for two days straight-after which she would stay awake for two days...
| 1 |